iB::Topic::Grub and DSL on hdb with WIN on hda

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Topic: Grub and DSL on hdb with WIN on hda

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larkl

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Posts: 177
Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: Sep. 21 2005,13:21

Well,

I was so impressed with DSL (frugal) on my old box that I added a second drive to my 'good' PC and did a frugal (grub) install on /dev/hdb. Now it seems very clear (ah hindsight) that having WIN on hda isn't going to work as grub is now the bootloader on hdb. So, I have a completely invisible DSL installation (ha). I see some info re- Wingrub, not sure that I want to go there. Not really up for a complete re-do. Could perhaps ooch a few gigs out of hda with a partitioning utility.

Am I right that the PC is always going to use the bootloader on the master (hda) drive? Options other than Wingrub?

larkl

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Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: Sep. 22 2005,11:25

I figured it out. I moved the Win drive to the slave drive and did the frugal install on the new master drive. Took awhile to get grub to find the drive. WOrking great!

Your Fuzzy God Offline

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Joined: July 2005

Posted: Sep. 22 2005,15:05

Just a heads up. Windows will problably have problems (at least in the long run) if it is not the "C:" or hda1 drive. The registry is pretty picky about it. I don't know a whole lot about dual booting, but you should be able to install grub to your windows drive by booting the DSL live cd and following SU's instructions here.

Good Luck!

--------------
Good Luck

-Fuzzy
www.mainframecomps.com
**Bienvienidos a la revolución**

larkl

Group: Members
Posts: 177
Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: Sep. 22 2005,15:33

So far it's working OK. If it starts to act hincky, I'll start over and maybe just put it all on the same drive. XP runs better when it's re-installed everyonce and awhile anyway.

cbagger01

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Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Sep. 23 2005,04:57

Luckily, Windows XP attaches the drive letter to the physical hard drive/partition ID number and not the IDE hard drive cable connection.

However, your Windows bootloader DOES use the cable connection to figure out where the boot partition is located. But this can be fixed if needed by editing the boot.ini file from the Windows recovery console.

What you DON'T want to do is have two bootable Windows XP drives connected to the same computer at the same time. Windows will then automatically render one of the drives permanently "unbootable" unless you do some under-the-hood work to fix it, both the bootloader and the drive letter assignment.

4 replies since Sep. 21 2005,13:21

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Damn Small Linux Board » Damn Small Linux » HD Install » Grub and DSL on hdb with WIN on hda